SPRINGFIELD, MASS. (WHDH) - Prosecutors say they were prepared to charge a former Roman Catholic priest in the murder of a 13-year-old alter boy back in 1972, and while the priest died last week the boy’s brother said he would still face justice.
State police detectives were authorized Friday by Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni to present the case against Richard Lavigne to a magistrate in order to obtain an arrest warrant for the murder of Danny Croteau; however, Lavigne died Friday evening in a hospital facility in Greenfield, according to the DA’s office.
“We were prepared to prosecute Richard Levine and prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Regrettably, due to Levine’s death there will be no prosecution or trial,” Gulluni said, adding that the case is now closed.
Danny’s brother, Joe Croteau, said, “We’re disappointed he’s not being brought to justice, but we believe there’s a higher power and he will face that higher power.”
Danny was found dead on April 15, 1972 in the Connecticut River in Chicopee, still dressed in his clothes from his previous school day at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart school, the DA’s office said. Blood-stained soil and blood-spattered rocks were also reportedly found.
Lavigne, a Roman Catholic priest and friend of the Croteau family, became a person of interest in Danny’s death because of the “inconsistent and unusual statements he had made to them in the days after the murder,” the DA’s office alleged.
Investigators also reportedly determined that Lavigne had initially lied about the list time he had seen Danny, and witnesses dispute his claim that he was never alone with Danny.
In addition, Lavigne was observed alone at the river’s bank at about 4:30 p.m. on April 16, 1972, the DA’s office said. On April 17, 1972, a police report of Lavigne’s interview with investigators notes one question asked by Lavigne, “If a stone was used and thrown in the river, would blood still be on it?”
That same day, a telephone call was made to the Croteau family home, in which then-19-year-old Carl Croteau, Jr. answered.
An unidentified male allegedly said, “we’re very sorry what happened to Danny. He saw something behind the Circle he shouldn’t have seen. It was an accident” before hanging up the phone.
Carl Croteau, Jr. told investigators that the male voice was familiar to him and that he recognized it as belonging to Lavigne.
When interviewed on January 27, 2021, Carl Croteau, Jr. said that within a month to a month-and-a-half before Danny’s murder, he remembered that Danny would return from being with Lavigne and Danny would be sick to his stomach from drinking alcohol, the DA’s office said. He also stated that his brother Danny usually was with Lavigne on the weekends, specifically Friday nights.
On March 23, 2004, Lavigne allegedly showed an employee of the Diocese of Springfield a typed, unsigned letter he said he received in the mail, adding that it must have been written by the murderer because of the guilt it described.
The person documented these conversations with Lavigne in emails to his superiors at the Diocese; however, they did not notify investigators of the letter until they were forced to produce the emails referencing the letter in answering to a grand jury subpoena in a separate criminal investigation of another clergy member, the DA’s office said.
On April 6, 2004, investigators executed a search warrant on Lavigne’s home in Chicopee to obtain the letter.
Lavigne allegedly told them that he received the letter sometime in January 2004 and was “very suspicious of it because it had no return address.” He also allegedly described an elaborate process of opening the letter with tweezers, and placing it in a plastic bag prior to reading it because “he knew about fingerprints and DNA.”
On March 5, 2021, Dr. Robert Leonard, an expert in forensic linguistics, began conducting an authorship analysis of the letter seized from Lavigne by investigators in 2004 and compare it to known writings of Lavigne gathered during the investigation.
He informed the DA’s office on May 21, 2021 that in his opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, “language patterns in the questioned document are consistent with language patterns in the known Lavigne documents to the point that Richard R. Lavigne cannot be excluded as a possible candidate of authorship.”
Between April 14 to 17 and on May 4, 2021, a state trooper conducted a series of interviews with Lavigne, totaling about 11 hours of dialogue.
During each interview, Lavigne allegedly refused to specifically admit that he killed Danny and the DA’s office says he became “cagey and evasive” at times, continuing his long-running attempts to mislead and distract investigators.
He made several statements indicating that he was the last person to see Danny alive, that he brought him to the riverbank on April 14, 1972, that he physically assaulted him there, and after leaving Danny there and returning a short time later, that he saw Danny floating face down in the river, the DA’s office said.
Lavigne allegedly continued that he neither attempted to rescue Danny or alert his parents or police of Danny’s whereabouts or condition.
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